Disciplinary orientations and method - Interdisciplinary approximations and distantiations. Documentation report of case study progress.

This deliverable provides a progress documentation of the Epinet case studies. It focusses on key factors in the coming together of disciplinary orientations and methods both within each case study and among the broader communities of expertise and experience who were involved in the embedding phase of the case studies

Governing the Median Estate: hyper-truth and post-truth in the regulation of digital innovations

This chapter focusses on governance of digital innovation, making two claims: first, that post - truth is not a mere surface phenomenon, but rather grounded in the general production of knowledge and ignorance. Second, it connects post truth discourse to the “hyper - truth” status of digital innovation agendas. The significant issue is one much commented on in STS (and related) scholarship, namely the intentional blurring and merger of boundaries (hybridisation) in technoscientific and digital innovation. The chapter points to two cases where such hybridisation becomes problematic: the design of privacy into ICT technologies, and a debate over personhood for robots. Both are “post truth” insofar as they intentionally blur the normative with the factual and technological. Hence hybridisation itself has become part of mainstream legitimation and cannot therefore be relied upon by scholars as a critical corrective to idealised and simplified legitimations based in science or law. The authors propose a concept of “boundary fusion”, according to which sources of authority are merged together, as an extension on traditional ideas of “boundary work”, according to which authority is made by separation of sources, such as science and law.publishedVersio

Make Way for the Robots! Human‑ and Machine‑Centricity in Constituting a European Public–Private Partnership

This article is an analytic register of recent European efforts in the making of ‘autonomous’ robots to address what is imagined as Europe’s societal challenges. The paper describes how an emerging techno-epistemic network stretches across industry, science, policy and law to legitimize and enact a robotics innovation agenda. Roadmap is the main metaphor and organizing tool in working across the disciplines and sectors, and in aligning these heterogeneous actors with a machine-centric vision along a path to make way for ‘new kinds’ of robots. We describe what happens as this industry-dominated project docks in a public–private partnership with pan-European institutions and a legislative initiative on robolaw. Emphasizing the co-production of robotics and European innovation politics, we observe how well-known uncertainties and scholarly debates about machine capabilities and human–machine configurations, are unexpectedly played out in legal scholarship and institutions as a controversy and a significant problem for human-centered legal frameworks. European robotics are indeed driving an increase in speculative ethics and a new-found weight of possible futures in legislative practice.publishedVersio

Making robotic autonomy through science and law?

This document reports on the Epinet workshop on the making of robot autonomy, held in Utrecht 16-17 February 2014. The workshop was part of a case study focused on developments in this area, in particular, autonomy for assistive robots in care and companionship roles. Our participants were of relevant expertise and professional experience: law and ethics, academic and industry robotics, vision assessment and science and technology studies (STS). The workshop was intended to explore the expectations of robot autonomy amongst our participants, against a backdrop of recent policy views and research trends that are openly pushing an agenda of "smarter", more dynamic and more autonomous systems (e.g. European Commission, 2008; EUROP, 2009; Robot Companions for Citizens, 2012). Robotics development is intimately connected with visions of robot autonomy, however, as a practical achievement, robot autonomy remains till this day part real, part promise. Ideas of robot autonomy are nevertheless powerful societally and culturally-specific visions, even if the very notion of "autonomy" is vague and inconsistent in recent accounts of future robots. These accounts still come together with considerable force in directing the efforts of researchers and experimenters, for example, in establishing funding priorities. They have a function in strategic planning for future developments. Accounts of future robots are also informing and shaping the efforts of legislators, ethicists and lawyers. To that effect, one can say that there is an official vision of future robots, a yardstick with which everyone implicated in robotics development has to measure their expectations

Coping with functional interrelatedness and stakeholder fragmentation in planning at the infrastructure-land use interface:The potential merits of a design approach

Road infrastructure projects are increasingly placed in their wider land-use context because of the functional relationships they have with surrounding areas. These more inclusive area-oriented planning processes typically involve a complex of interdependent but institutionally fragmented actors. Effective operationalization of collaborative strategies therefore remains difficult. Various policies introduce spatial design efforts to the infrastructure planning processes as a strategy to deal with these issues. This paper explores experiences in the Netherlands that have placed spatial design in vital positions in the process. An exploration of literature from the fields of spatial design, planning, and geography teaches us that design approaches, in such cases, may be applied to serve as a communicative modus that fosters dialogue, creativity, and eventually an inclusive and shared story about an area’s future. We interviewed designers experienced in serving that role and asked them whether and how such objectives are achieved. Consecutively, in order to come to practical lessons for exploitation of the merits indicated by the interviewees, we studied two projects that the interviewees considered best practices. We conclude that a combination of technical and relational design can effectively help a fragmented group of actors to find a shared and meaningful story and make integral choices on infrastructure projects, framed within a wider area’s development. Ensuring effective iterations between technical and relational design requires institutionalization of the coordinative capacities of design, as well as the right mindset among participants. This way, the employment of such design approaches facilitates effective operationalization of collaborative governance at the infrastructure/land-use interface

Disciplinarity and value commitments:interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and innovation assessment (discussion paper)

The Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation is promoting an approach referred to as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Mandates to implement and mainstream RRI are already evident, whereby interdisciplinarity and integration are treated as pre-given in accounts of what the RRI approach is in practice. In this paper, our point of departure is to ask what to expect realistically when experts and professionals are brought together across disciplines, institutions and national borders in practical attempts to achieve interdisciplinarity and integration of approach to innovation. We revisit Woolgar's and Ashmore's treatise on social epistemology in their development of the reflexive thesis in the late 1980s, and we revisit the turn to practice in STS in the early 2000s. We present our analysis of commitment to matters of practical sensitivity and reflexivity in reference to the philosophical influences and study objectives of the reflexive thesis and the practice turn and we consider how sociological studies have articulated expert practices and the use of knowledge and skill. We address the epistemological challenges innovation assessments face in justifying the relationship they draw between study objects, observation, interpretation and representation and in justifying ideologically and methodologically their own production of knowledge about how others produce knowledge. We address the implications this work has for the development of interdisciplinarity and integration in case studies we have observed, of evaluating new-emerging innovation domains. We argue that the consequences of advancing reflexivity (or awareness of it) as a progressive step forward, rather than a problem to remedy, is critical in shaping a more balanced approach to innovation, even though achieving interdisciplinarity and integration is fragmented and partial

People from lower social classes elicit greater prosociality:Compassion and deservingness matter

People are quick to form impressions of others’ social class, and likely adjust their behavior accordingly.If social class is linked to prosociality, as literature suggests, then an interaction partner’s class shouldaffect prosocial behavior, especially when costs or investments are low. We test this expectation usingsocial mindfulness (SoMi) and dictator games (DG) as complementary measures of prosociality. Wemanipulate target class by providing information regarding a target’s (a) position on a social classladder, and (b) family background. Three studies using laboratory and online approaches (Noverall =557) in two nations (the Netherlands [NL], the UK), featuring actual and hypothetical exchanges, revealthat lower class targets are met with greater prosociality than higher class targets, even when based oninformation about the targets’ parents (Study 3). The effect of target class was partially mediated bycompassion (Studies 2 and 3) and perceived deservingness of the target (Study 3). Implications andlimitations are discussed.Social decision makin

Observations and reflexivity:responsibilising interdisciplinarity and integration

This policy report is based in Epinet WP2 and complements WP1 reporting on the EPINET Integrated Assessment Framework as a Tool for RRI . We present key findings from the empirical research we conducted and was designed to be an instrument of observation and reflexivity in reference to the interdisciplinary innovation assessment cases conducted as part of the Epinet project. In particular, we report on the procedural conditions in carrying out these cases as the basis on which our policy recommendations rest